3 00⁄100 Dollars Ohio Sales Tax Receipt

Ohio's Depression-era sales tax receipts were issued as fractional currency substitutes after the state introduced its sales tax in 1934 — merchants received these notes to make change when the tax calculation produced an amount below one cent. The Columbian Bank Note Company, a Chicago firm with a long history of printing municipal and transit paper, handled production. The watermark was the primary security measure, modest by banknote standards but sufficient for a low-denomination fiscal instrument unlikely to attract serious counterfeiting effort.

The three-dollar denomination is the oddity here. Most Ohio sales tax receipt series ran in fractions well below a dollar, making a three-dollar face value an outlier worth examining closely for issue date and series letter before cataloging.